Coppers in United States and seven other countries seized servers running a "scareware" scheme that has nicked  more than $72 million from daft victims. Twenty-two computers and servers were seized in the United States and 25 were found in France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The US Justice Department  said the "scareware" on the computers of 960,000 victims. Latvian authorities seized at least five bank accounts believed to have been used by the leaders of the scam. So far there have been no arrests.

Coppers would not confirm whether the seizures were directly connected to a raid early on Tuesday morning at a web-hosting company in northern Virginia where they took servers, a move that disrupted more than 120 websites.